Monday, May 5, 2014

Lost

“Lost—by Me: One Four-Year-Old Boy. If Found, Please Keep.”

That doesn’t sound right. Let me explain.

Back in February, my doctor decided that I needed to lose some weight. I didn’t necessarily agree. Weight, to me, has always signified degrees of desirability; and at my age, I figured I was over all that. My doctor, on the other hand, considers weight an indication of longevity; and he believes that, at my age, I might be able to buy back a few years from the reaper.

He prescribed me a pill.

Whatever happened to those old Marcus Welby’s who would hand you a mimeographed weekly menu and tell you to eat only that for the next month or two?

Everything today is a pill or a shot.

And it was a pill I got, and a pill I took.

Like all pills, this one has side effects. I looked them up. I discovered I could expect to experience an upsurge of energy. (I fall asleep.) There might be dry-mouth. (Oh, yes.) Perhaps nausea. (Uh-uh.) Possibly diarrhea. (Oh, hell, no!)

No, my side effects consisted of anxiety, depression, irritability...and a frisson of horniness.

ADIH. Not a tasty alphabet soup.

I have found myself struggling to suppress an increasing urge to walk up to total strangers and say to them, “You wouldn’t want to have sex with me, would you? No! I figured not, you filthy pig whore!”

Fortunately, I have so far been successful in monitoring my behavior. Otherwise, you would have known I had been nursing certain bodily injuries.

On the plus side, the pills have worked. I went back to my doctor this past Friday for a weigh-in, and it is official. I have lost the equivalent, in pounds, of a four-year-old boy.

You may pat me on the back.

Not too hard. I tend to topple.

On the minus side, however, I now have the equivalent of a four-year-old-girl to go within the next three months.